Mass Communication & Media Literacy 02

Media Meanings

Looking at ‘text’ as a way of focusing and analysing the meaning of media output

Defining and using the tools of rhetorical analysis

Extending the analysis to newspaper articles, web pages, music recordings, magazine covers, films, computer games ... All media products

What’s the difference between the artefactual, commodity and textual aspects of media outputs?

What are the rhetorical devices involved in producing and organising meaning in texts?

1. Physical form as artefact2. Economic value embodied in media output –

commodity status – cost and price3. Site for generating meaning – the ways we

are affected psychologically, emotionally, culturally, physically, and intellectually by media output

Think of 5 media products in your possessionFor each think of its status as artefact,

commodity and text How useful are the categories for understanding the

media products? Is there any confusion between categories? What are the advantages and disadvantages of

thinking about thinking of media in this way?

Making sense of textual meaning

Why text?What is the work that has gone into

preparing us for the meaning making with texts? The work of the media producers The ‘work’ of media consumers Our socialisation with media – our ongoing encounter

with media textsContext

Music

MusicMusicmusic

How media make meaning leads toWhy media make meanings in the ways they

do

To explore this we need a common technical language that avoids (where possible) subjective judgements

A ‘meta’ or framing language that makes sense of media across media forms

Rhetoric

Our personal involvement with media texts is a result of the mastery that media producers have over a series of production techniques called media rhetoric

Rhetoric = the construction and manipulation of language by the creator of a text for affective purposes

Rhetoric asks How are media texts put together as media texts? How do they organise and present meaning?

Texts are constructed in order to position audiences in particular ways to elicit emotional, psychological or physical responses

TO PAY ATTENTION and so aid cognition

Cognition The way in which we, as individuals, acquire

knowledge as well as apply it – the process through which we comprehend events and idea in order to come to understand the world

Rhetorical analysis suggests that media is not mainly about information

Media is tied to the ways we learn about that information: it’s presentation and the particularities of the medium ‘the medium is the message’ We shape the tools which then shape us

Rhetoric, language and meaning

Language The building blocks from which meanings are made

and communication created – words, phrases, images and sounds + rules create grammar and syntax

Rhetoric The ways language is manipulated to a particular

purpose (fear watching horror films: excitement playing video games)

Meaning The interpretation of messages by readers of text

Classical Origins

the art of speaking or writing effectively: the study of principles and rules of composition formulated by critics of ancient times

Aristotle – The Art of RhetoricRhetorical question? Empty rhetoric?

Insincerity or exaggerationIt is possible to draw up a list of rhetorical

devices that are used by practitioners for every medium

Tools and techniques: verbal

Verbal Rhetoric The word as written or spoken Journalistic style

Alliteration Paddy Pantsdown’s furtive fling

Rhyme and allusion It’s bitsy, teeny weeny, Britney’s dream in her bikini

Euphemism Wife takes knife to cheating hubby’s meat and two veg

Metaphor Iraq is a pressure cooker ready to explode

Metonym Face to Face

Ellipses You terrorist b@*!$@%s

Cliche High noon: EU sends ultimatum

Tools and techniques: verbal

Tone

The reader is primarily interested in what you have to say. By the way in which you say it you may encourage him either to read on or to stop reading. If you want him to read on:

Do not be stuffy. “To write a genuine, familiar or truly English style”, said Hazlitt, “is to write as anyone would speak in common conversation who had a thorough command or choice of words or who could discourse with ease, force and perspicuity setting aside all pedantic and oratorical flourishes.”

In “How to Be a Better Reporter”, Arthur Brisbane put it like this: “Avoid fancy writing. The most powerful words are the simplest. ‘To be or not to be, that is the question,’ ‘In the beginning was the word,’ ‘We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep,’ ‘Out, out, brief candle,’ ‘The rest is silence.’ Nothing fancy in those quotations. A natural style is the only style.”

Use the language of everyday speech, not that of spokesmen, lawyers or bureaucrats (so prefer let to permit, people to persons, buy to purchase, colleague to peer, way out to exit, present to gift, rich to wealthy, break to violate). It would not have been difficult to rephrase these sentences from a British civil servant's report: “At a national level, the department engaged stakeholders positively from 23 February 2001. … Economist Style guide http://bit.ly/bJnYSm

Tools and techniques: presentational

What happens to words once they are chosen and deployed in media texts?

Accent – The question of the BBCNon-verbal devices – nod ... Over to you

William at the scene of the disaster ...Sound effects in radioChoices of decor and location in audio-visual

production

Tools and techniques: presentational

Photographic devices Composition Re-touching Cropping Juxtaposition Montage

Tools and techniques: editorial

Organisation of the moving image (also relevant to audio media)

Storyboarding http://accad.osu.edu/womenandtech/Storyboard%20R

esource/Techniques

Camera shots, cuts create a grammatical organisation for film

Conclusion

How does any attempt to analyse ‘affect’ and meaning relate to the kinds of likely responses in the majority of an audience? Start with your own reading Don’t stop at your own reading What is the implied rhetorical positioning for the

audience? ‘This does nothing for me’ or ‘how is this text asking

me to respond?’ Careful about claiming intent on behalf of media

producers Careful about assuming an implied audience